


another thing that i can't fix

by shineyma



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Post-Game(s), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 19:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4847648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike isn't leaving, and they can't make him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	another thing that i can't fix

**Author's Note:**

> My first Until Dawn fic, but probably not my last, because I ship these two SO HARD and I have lots of feelings.
> 
> Title is from Uncle Kracker's _I'm Not Leaving_. Thanks for reading!

Once the doctors are done with him, the cops question Mike for ages.

They’ve got questions about everything, but the most (and the worst) are about Jess. They keep coming back to her, asking the same things over and over again, about the cabin and the mines and why they were alone in the first place—and fuck if that doesn’t hurt, doesn’t make him remember Jess calling it a sexcapade with that grin on her face.

It makes sense, right? A girl goes missing, her boyfriend’s always the first suspect, and it doesn’t help that Emily was apparently all too happy to tell them about how he almost shot her. So it’s not like it’s _weird_ that they keep coming back to Jess, and it’s not like _the wendigos did it_ is a great explanation. It makes sense.

But it kind of kills him.

He keeps having to stop, to breathe through the pain in his lungs that’s got nothing to do with wendigos or explosions or a fucking bear trap and _everything_ to do with the worst thing that happened tonight.

Because he lost Jess.

He lost her, and he doesn’t want to think about her. He’s spent all night trying to forget the way she screamed for help and the look on her face when he found her in the mines and how _close_ he was, how he _almost_ saved her, when she fell. He’s gonna spend the rest of his _life_ trying to forget it.

But they won’t let him. They ask him the same fucking questions again and again, and again and again he tells them the truth: he could have saved her, if only he’d been faster. If he hadn’t hesitated when he saw how beat up she was, if he’d just grabbed her the second he reached her, she wouldn’t have fallen. She wouldn’t have died.

And eventually, after God knows how long, the woman questioning him sighs and nods and puts her notes aside.

“She didn’t,” she says, and Mike’s too tired, too fucking _drained_ , to ask, so he just stares. “Jess didn’t die, Mike.”

His blood runs cold—colder than wandering that fucking mountain in nothing but a wifebeater and jeans.

“What?”

“Jess is alive,” she says, voice the gentlest it’s been this whole time. “She was recovered outside of the mines and brought here on a different helicopter. She’s alive.”

For a second, he can’t breathe. She’s _alive_? _How_? She fell so fucking far—

But who the fuck _cares_ how, as long as it’s true?

“Really?” he manages. “Jess is—”

“She’s going to be fine,” the cop says, and relief hits him so hard he goes dizzy, has to hold his head in his hands and just _breathe_ for a minute.

“I want to see her,” he says, once he’s capable of it.

And it doesn’t happen right away—there are cops and doctors and who the fuck knows who else, all full of reasons he can’t—but it’s all just bullshit, and eventually he gets his way, and they let him out of the makeshift interrogation room.

It’s not a long walk to Jess’ room, but it feels like one. His legs are like lead, and each step takes just as much effort as surviving last night. His heart beats loud in his ears, like a fucking drum pounding to the rhythm of _she’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive_.

But he gets there eventually. He walks in and sees her, bruised and bandaged and pale, and somehow—he might actually black out for a second, because he doesn’t remember moving—the next thing he knows he’s in the chair next to her bed, holding her hand and feeling the warmth of her skin.

After that, he can’t leave.

They try to make him, nurses and doctors talking about how much _trauma_ he’s been through and how he’s had a long night (like he doesn’t fucking know that) and needs his rest, but he doesn’t budge. He _won’t_.

Jess is only sleeping, he’s assured over and over again. Between everything that happened last night and the drugs they gave her (for a list of injuries that turns his stomach every time he lets himself think about it), it’s not a surprise. She’s fine—she’s hurt but she’ll be fine, she just needs her rest, and so does he.

But he’s not leaving.

“I know you’ve been through a lot, son,” one doctor (they all start to blend together by hour four) says, “but it’s over now. She’s not going to disappear the second you turn your back.”

Mike doesn’t tell him that turning his back isn’t the problem. He was looking right at her when that fucking wendigo dragged her through the window—was looking right at her when she fell down into the mines.

He watched her _die_ last night, and that she’s somehow, by some miracle, actually alive doesn’t change that. Neither does the heart monitor or the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest.

To him, she was dead for _hours_ , and until he actually talks to her—until she opens her eyes and looks at him and says something that isn’t a goddamn plea for him to be better, _faster_ —a plea for him to save her like he should have—he won’t be able to believe that she’s not.

And even then, he’s not fucking leaving.

That’s all he says: “I’m not leaving.”

Because she’s alive, which means she was down there wandering the fucking mines all night, _alone_ and with no one to warn her about the wendigos or protect her from them—and that’s because of him. Because he went _up_ , chasing after revenge when he should’ve gone down, found a way to where she’d fallen and gotten her out of there.

His girl’s a survivor, and she got herself out. She made it out on her own. He’s proud of her for it, he really is—for toughing it out with no weapons and no help, while he had both and still barely made it through the night. Sam saved him; Jess saved herself.

But she shouldn’t have had to.

He left her once, and he’s not doing it again. No fucking way.


End file.
